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The Oscar Category That Should Be

Do you remember the song "You'll Be In My Heart" by Phil Collins? It was from Tarzan and it won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1999 (beating out Aimee Mann's "Save Me" from Magnolia for Christ's sake). Anyway, do you remember that "Tarzan" song over, say, The Who's "A Quick One While He's Away" from Wes Anderson's Rushmore the year before? That Phil Collins song was a hit, I know, but I'm going to say at this point, you, cinema lover, might not remember that tune. Phil Collins probably doesn't even remember "You'll Be In My Heart" over The Who. Or The Creation. Or The Faces. Or Cat Stevens. Or The Rolling Stones. Or the entire Rushmore soundtrack.

My point? Why not an Oscar category for Best Soundtrack? Or, rather, the best use of pre-existing music?

Though obviously Best Original Song should remain, and there's plenty of now iconic Best Originals, like "The Way You Look Tonight" (from Swing Time, 1936) or "Over the Rainbow" (from The Wizard of Oz, 1939), often the Best Original Song is NOT the song we remember. Why did Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life" show up on an ad for a cruise line? (They better have good drugs on that cruise.)

The ability to create a meaningful, visceral, powerfully edited soundtrack (and working with songs so damn perfectly and often songs not usually heard in movies, like the not one, but two songs by the band Love in Bottle Rocket, or Dignan running from the cops, tuned perfectly to The Stones' "2000 Man") is a specific talent that, thanks to Music Supervisors and the editors and directors who work with them (*note: a good question a commenter raised is, based on the collaborative nature of the process, who would win the award?) has created moments in movies so iconic, that we often can't imagine the song without the scene.

I can't even listen to "Born to Be Wild" unless I'm watching Easy Rider (as much as I love Steppenwolf), and The Byrds' "Wasn't Born to Follow" remains one of my favorite moments in that picture. And then there's the opening credits of Mean Streets scored to The Ronettes' "Be My Baby," the Stealers Wheel "Stuck in the Middle With You" ear severing in Reservoir Dogs, Margot Tennenbaum walking off the Green Line bus to Nico's "These Days," Billy Batts meeting his demise to Donovan's "Atlantis," and more and more and more.

From American Graffiti to Casino to Dazed and Confused to Crooklyn to Boogie Nights to 2001 to Dead Presidents to Pulp Fiction to Velvet Goldmine to Over the Edge (Cheap fucking Trick) to Trainspotting to Candy to Harold and Maude (even as some of the songs were written for the movie, other were on Stevens' "Mona Bone Jakon" and "Tea for the Tillerman") to Floyd Mutrux's Dusty and Sweets McGee to every freaking Wes Anderson movie (this year's Moonrise Kingdom gives us Françoise Hardy, Hank Willams and Benjamin Britten) -- I don't even know why I'm listing them. You know these movies. And their songs.

There should be an award. If this category existed, we might have be allowed the pleasure of watching Rodriguez sing one of his beautiful, soul wrenching songs tonight, from the Oscar-nominated documentary Searching For Sugarman.

Musical supervisors deserve some Oscars, Martin Scorsese deserves a lifetime achievement award for the Goodfellas helicopter sequence alone and The Coen Brothers should win some kind of trophy for making us remember how cool Kenny Rogers used to be via Lebowski's dream scored to "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)." Think about it Oscar. And listen.

From my Criticwire Survery answer to: What new category should the Academy add to the Oscars?

Comments

I agree wholeheartedly.
A personal anecdote: I do remember "You'll Be In My Heart," but not because of its use in Tarzan. I remember it, because I had to hear it approximately 30 times a day during the summer of 1999, due to the fact that it was a song on the "Movietunes" CD that played in the lobby of the multiplex I worked at at that time.
In spite of that, all I remember of it is Collins singing the title phrase.

Great post! Sometimes when I listen to my favorite songs, I imagine scenes they would work well in. Example: I've always thought the closing minute of Journey's "Stone In Love" is screaming to be used in some cocaine-fueled 1980s-era scene.

Well one reason this doesn't exist is because you can't really attribute the accomplishment to a job category. Music Supervisors are often flacks selling the tunes ( or bands) in their briefcase, as opposed to finding the right song for a moment in the film. Plus there are lots of people who bring these ideas to the show. Certain directors come to preproduction meetings with their soundtracks playing in the room. Others come out of the assistant editor's personal music libraries. And the credit for making these songs fit so well would also have to be shared among the editor, the music editor, and even the composer who often has the ever so difficult task of scoring around them. What makes a soundtrack work is no clear set of rules or processes, but is one of the many collaborative magics of movies. Great column and definitely an area that is overlooked. Just not sure how you could resolve the fight over who gets on stage to accept it.

I agree. Writing this made me think of the editor, director and music supervisor and who would pick up the award. Some of them ARE quite hands-on, but so are many directors and screenwriters, who think about the music, often when they're writing the scenes. Whoever the director (and I hope the director) gives the pass to FOR the music, however, seems like the seal of approval so... give it to the music supervisor.

David O. Russell's use of Led Zeppelin's "What Is and What Should Never Be" in Silver Linings Playbook is the most recent example I can think of where the soundtrack added an order of magnitude more emotional impact.